The acquisition, preparation and consumption of food may be thought of as a dominant force of human activity. As modern cultures have developed, the preparation of foods having a variety of pleasing tastes and aesthetic presentations have enhanced the culinary art. Indeed, a plethora of different food products are available for food purchase by different consumers. Many of such food items are fully prepared and/or ready for immediate consumption, such as for example, bakery products, some fruits, snack items, etc. Some food items are fully cooked but require reheating such as, canned vegetables, canned meats, some bakery products and the like. Other food items may be substantially prepared but do need to be cooked by the consumer. With literally thousands of fully prepared or partially prepared food items being offered for sale in food stores, food processing companies are constantly seeking advantages to entice the consumer to purchase their particular food product or food products. One advantage being sought by food processing companies includes improving the physical appearance of the product.
A pasta product known as spaghetti may be used to illustrate how a food processing company may promote its own food product in favor over a competitor's product. Here, for example, one food processing company packages a spaghetti product having three differently colored spaghetti noodles. One noodle is green, the other is red, and the other is the standard pale-yellow color of traditional pasta. Here, the green colored spaghetti is made by adding a spinach powered to a typical pasta dough before it is formed into the spaghetti noodles; in the red colored spaghetti noodle, tomato powder may be added. Displaying the assembly of three differently colored noodles in a transparent bag affords visual appeal to the consumer. When cooked, a tantalizing aroma arouses the olfactory senses and the multi-colored pasta provides a visually pleasing presentation when set before a diner. Moreover, the different flavors of the multi-colored pasta can be tasteful and, where vegetables are used to generate color, additional nutritional value is imparted to this spaghetti. A nutrition conscience consumer may be enticed to purchase a multi-colored pasta product not only because of its aesthetics and flavor but also because of the supplement nutritional value that may be contained therein.
In contrast to the packaging of individually colored spaghettis, it is known to laminate pasta noodles to have different colors. An example of this is described in Japanese patent disclosure 90-227,327/30 to Watanabe filed Dec. 6, 1988 and published as J.P. 309,090 on Jun. 14, 1990. In this disclosure, sheets of noodle dough are laminated with one another with a binding agent after which the laminated noodles may be further rolled and cut into noodle-like strips so that each strip has a layer of color which extends completely through the noodle. While this technique may be suitable for forming noodles with multi-bands of color, the Watanabe disclosure does not show a process or production sheet wherein wide bands of color may be used for other pasta products, snack items, pastries and the like.
Accordingly, a need remains for a process that can more efficiently and effectively produce production sheets of formed dough wherein the production sheet has bands of different characteristics extending therethrough whereby the production sheet may be cut and cooked into food items or further processed to create food items that are visually pleasing and tasty to the consumer. Moreover, a need exists for such a production sheet, a method for producing such sheet and final food products made therefrom which can be implemented in automated food processing technology. The present invention is directed to such processes and food products.